S2E13: The Hell Atop a Dead Volcano

To sell the story of a great battle at the mouth of an ancient volcano, colonial papers in Mindanao praised the fighting prowess of both sides. In one corner, the American fighting force, soldiers from the 6th and 19th Infantry, the 4th Cavalry, the 28th Artillery, plus Navy sailors and Philippine constables. In the other corner, a band of moros would turn the mountain top of Budaho into their stronghold. In the aftermath of the fighting, the newspapers praised the fighting spirit of the Moro warriors. Here's the Mindanao herald from March 10, 1906, in an article entitled "Fierce Battle on Budaho." The moros fought with the greatest germination, but few attempted to escape. Upon finding themselves in danger of capture, they would sally forth and attack the troops with their bolas and spears, and their efforts would not cease until the last man fell. Many papers also quoted General Leonard Wood, governor of the Moro province, who said that these moros would rather fight to the death instead of retreating, unlike the more cowardly Christian Filipinos in Luzon. Of course, by presenting their foes as tenacious warriors, the newspapers were also not so slyly boosting the heroism of the American troops. Here were your soldiers on their great civilizing mission, battling against strange and fierce enemies, and persevering despite all odds. It was a great and moving story, and one that soon collapsed as evidence began to emerge that the battle at the top of the volcano of Budaho was no battle at all, but a massacre. Welcome to the Colonial Department, a podcast where we take long-lost stories from Philippine colonial history and bring them to life. In this episode, we talk about one of the most brutal atrocities in Philippine history and how the colonial government tried their best to cover it up. This is Season 2, Episode 13, The Hell Atop a Dead Volcano. The way the Americans told it, the Moro was almost superhuman. In one famous tale, a resident of Holó was able to survive seven straight shots from an army revolver before cutting off the leg of an American soldier with one clean swing of the blade. Moros can land on their feet from drops of 15 to 20 feet high or dive to depths of 100 feet. One colonel even said that there was never any record of any Moro drowning. And then, like Viking berserkers of old, Moros would sometimes be seized in an uncontrollable fit of violence and go huramentado on all their enemies, slaughtering everyone they could find until they were shot dead. It was a romantic, seductive, exotic narrative, one that fueled Americans' imagination about their brand-new colony. Living rent-free in their heads were made-up images of the Port of Sulu looking like a Middle Eastern bazaar or souk, with the people living there standing proud as noble savages, just like the vanquished tribes of Native Americans. Of course, this romanticized, exaggerated view of Moros also worked to the colonizer's benefit. With just a little nudging, the idea of a noble savage could transform very, very quickly into barbarian fanatic. And then that would be the perfect excuse to send the soldiers in. But before the soldiers came for the Moros of Buddaho, it was the taxmen that got to them first. The colonial administration's Sedula, or head tax, was one of the most hated measures in all of Mindanao. The Muslim Filipinos viewed it as either corrupt to the core or a gross violation of their existing customs. Throughout the regime, the friction about the Sedula tax often escalated into bloody violence. In February 1906, over 600 Moro men, women, and children had had enough. Eager to get away from a government that attacks them to the bone, this band of refugees backed up their bags and hiked up the slopes to the second highest point in all of Sulu. Standing 620 meters above sea level, the heavily forested Buddaho was a cinder cone volcano that had long burned itself out. The refugees settled themselves inside its silent crater, the mouth of the volcano, their strange and beautiful shelter from the oppressive American regime. It wasn't just the tax they were fleeing. Many of them were also convinced that the ultimate aim of the colonizers was to wipe out Islam from the islands. At first, the Americans were eager to negotiate with a breakaway group. Just two years before, they had massacred 226 Moros over the issue of the Sedula tax, and Major Hugh Scott, military governor of Sulu, seemed unwilling to have a repeat of that bloody afternoon. He sent envoys to meet with the Moros at Buddaho, and many high-ranking Muslim chieftains called on the rebels to turn themselves in to the Americans. But the colonizers soon changed their tune, negotiations would take time, and there was a quicker way to pacify rebels. When the offices of the provincial headquarters came a clear order, the Buddaho Moros would have to be exterminated. Meanwhile, within the crater, the Moros began building their fortifications. Just how one sided was the battle between the Moro rebels at Buddaho and the American Task Force, 790 soldiers strong that was assembled to eliminate them. To stop the Americans as they ascended the volcano summit, the Moros were equipped with firearms, including 200 rifles and 6 or 7 old Antacas, or muzzle-loaded cannon, that was mounted on top of their cotas. But they also resorted to loading the cannons with stones, which rattled on the trees above the Americans' heads whenever they fired. The Moros also constructed bamboo traps across the three trails the Americans took up the mountain. In three columns of American soldiers finally reached the top, the Moros resorted to hand-to-hand fighting with homemade explosives and their own bladed weapons, the spear, the barong, the criss, the campilan. Meanwhile against these rocks and blades and bamboo traps, the Americans were equipped with grab-yorgans and rifles and colt automatics. They climbed the volcano in three columns that pierced through the south, the east, and the west. Pigeoning themselves on the lip of the crater, they rained down rifle and artillery and machine gun fire against the Moro fortifications below. More than 75 years later, Private Vinton B. Hill, who was only 18 years old at the time of the massacre, remembered what happened when they pulled the trigger on the machine guns. "They turned that machine gun on them and they'd stand there, the Moros would, and just looked like dominoes falling when they brought that machine gun around there. And that's the first time I ever saw a machine gun in action. They were out there 500 yards just curious, and that's the way they went." The Americans and their allies lost 21 men with 73 wounded. Meanwhile, the death toll among the Moros remains up to debate to this day. The official report pegs the number at around 600. Moro interpreters told a major that there were a thousand dead. Private Vinton remembers that there were "1800 killed." Historians suggest that the number lies anywhere from 700 to 900 casualties. Whatever the true number, numerous women and children were among them. As we said at the start of this episode, initial news reports praised the fighting spirit of the Moros, but in a perverse way, this was also used as justification for the numerous deaths. Many Moro women fought beside the men or used children as human shields, said the official military report. The official report concluded that losses wouldn't have been as high if they had just surrendered or melted away into the woods like the Filipino resistance fighters in Luzon. General Leonard Wood even brought pants into the discussion. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, he said that because the Moro warrior women wore trousers, the chivalrous American soldiers had no way of knowing that they were actually women. As excuses go, this was an astonishingly enraging one. Not a thing to say to the dead that they had worn the wrong clothes. As news of Buddhahoe spread, many Americans were appalled at the violence that had been inflicted on the Moros. Angry letters flooded the editorial offices of the Mindanao Herald. Mopulpit at New York, a Presbyterian minister, railed against the American victory, which he said had been built on the bodies of "mangled men, torn women, armless and headless children." Senators from the Democratic Party called the Battle of Buddhahoe "Wanton Butchery." Perhaps the most cutting criticism came from Mark Twain, who was a card-carrying member of the Anti-Imperialist League. His unpublished essay on the events at Buddhahoe was entitled "Comments on the Moro Massacre," and sarcasm dripped out of every page. Wrote the author of Tom Sawyer, "This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States." Mark Twain did not mince his words. He called the soldiers "butchers" and "uniformed assassins." Many of the soldiers had replaced bullets with bibles and the golden rule, he said. It would still have been a most shameful and dishonorable victory. The American military knew that the massacre would not be well received and tried to stage manage the news from the start. Leonard would maintain that the massacre reports were exaggerated or a product of sensationalist journalism. A rebuttal published in the Hartford Current even used two words that we, as people living in 2022, are already very, very familiar with, "fake news." One of the things that the Americans were eager to suppress were photos of the massacre. There was one photo in particular that, two months after the massacre happened, was in the possession of a schoolteacher. An American official suggested that they seize the photo and destroy it before it spread, put the Philippine colonial government in a bad light, and even cause a scandal right before the elections that year. It's a stomach-turning photograph, apparently taken on March 7, 1906. In the black and white picture, about two dozen stone-faced American soldiers stand above a shallow trench, heaped with numerous corpses. The bodies and faces of children are recognizable among the dead. In the center of the shot is a dead woman, her clothes open to expose her right breast. She has a great piercing wound on her neck, from a bullet maybe, or a bayonet. Lying on her stomach is a baby, their cheek blown wide open. Six weeks later, a new photograph was taken on the site. This time, the American soldiers look more upbeat. They have their chests puffed out, their hands on their sides are crossed over sticks, as if they were putting on heroic poses for the camera. The bodies of the moros are already decomposed, and someone had arranged around 20 skulls on top of a fallen log for the soldiers to pose beside. Despite the intensity of the outrage, the massacre at Bouddaho faded quickly from public consciousness. Part of it certainly was the nature of the new cycle, which soon became preoccupied at least in the states, with more domestic matters. But it is also true that the official narrative about the massacre would win out in the end, that the events of Bouddaho, while tragic, were a necessary part of civilizing America's new frontier. Still, the haunting photos from the volcano summit survive to this day. The photo with a dead woman and the photo with the skulls are among the most enduring images that survive from that atrocity. They're both easy enough to find today with a simple search in Google, and the US Library of Congress even has them in their digital archives. They're both harrowing photographs, and very difficult to look at. But look, we must, if only to see the faces, both living and dead, captured by the searing flash of a camera, and testament to the cruelties of empire and to the violence that men will do to maintain it. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Colonial Department. References used in this episode are written on the show notes, but I'd also like to express my thanks to my main sources. Chapter 4 of Oliver Charbonneau's 2021 book Colonial Imperatives Michael Hawkins' journal article "Managing a Massacre, Savagery, Civility, and Chender" in Moro province in the wake of Bouddaho, and Wayne Sanford's journal article, "Battle of Bouddaho, 6 March 1906". Quotes from sources were read by Anya Ong. The Colonial Department was written and produced by Leo Mangubat. Follow us on Instagram @TheColonialDepartment.